Question 1

What is APISelf?

Accepted Answer

APISelf is a catalogue of self-hosted, buy-once alternatives to popular SaaS tools. You buy a Box (a single-binary microapp), run it on your own machine, and own it forever - no subscriptions and no cloud lock-in. A local orchestrator called the Manager runs at localhost:7474 and handles installation, updates and proxying. The Manager checks in with APISelf every six hours with a hardware ID, its version, the platform and which Boxes are installed; the exact payload is shown in its settings and the check-in can be switched off.

Question 2

Can I use self-hosted apps as MCP tools in Claude, Claude Code or Cursor?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every Box ships an OpenAPI document, and the Manager turns all of them into MCP tools on one endpoint at http://localhost:7474/api/mcp. Point Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Cursor at that endpoint and every installed Box becomes a callable tool - install another Box and its tools appear with no extra configuration. A prompt like "record my screen, transcribe it, summarise it and send the summary to Telegram" runs as four tool calls across the Recorder, Transcribe and Notify Boxes, entirely on your own machine.

Question 3

Which AI runs locally and which uses the cloud?

Accepted Answer

Both, chosen per model. Local models - Whisper for speech, llama.cpp for text, Stable Diffusion for images - download once into a shared folder and run on your own CPU or GPU, with no key and no request leaving the machine. Cloud models are bring-your-own-key: your OpenAI, Anthropic or Google key goes into the AI Gateway Box, the only place a key is stored, and other Boxes route through it without ever seeing the key. You pay your provider directly at their prices; APISelf takes no cut. Boxes that use AI ship with a local model as the default.

Question 4

How does "buy once, own forever" actually work? Does the license expire?

Accepted Answer

Every paid box ships with a perpetual RS256 JWT license signed by APISelf and verified locally by your Manager using an embedded RSA public key - no network call is required to validate it. The license is bound to your email and Hardware ID. Revocation is checked every ~6 hours and tolerates being offline for up to 30 days. If the trial of a paid tier expires, the box gracefully degrades to its Free tier instead of going dark, so you never lose access to your data.

Question 5

What's the difference between APISelf and SaaS like Typeform or WeTransfer?

Accepted Answer

SaaS runs on the vendor's servers and charges you a recurring fee for access. APISelf Boxes run on your own machine - Forms, Filedrop, Recorder, Transcribe, Notify, Storage, etc. - and you pay one time per box. There are no monthly fees, your data never touches APISelf cloud, and the boxes keep working if APISelf disappears tomorrow (the license stays valid; only paid upgrades stop).

Question 6

Where does my data live? Does APISelf see it?

Accepted Answer

All box data lives on your hardware in a platform-standard location (%LOCALAPPDATA%\APISelf on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/APISelf on macOS, ~/.local/share/apiself on Linux). APISelf cloud only sees: your email and license JWT (for purchase + revocation checks). It never sees file contents, form responses, recordings, transcripts, or notifications. Filedrop links, for example, are transferred peer-to-peer via WebRTC - the filename never leaves your machine.

Question 7

What operating systems are supported?

Accepted Answer

Linux (amd64 + arm64), macOS (amd64 + arm64), and Windows (amd64). Install with one command - Linux: curl -fsSL https://apiself.com/install/en/setup.sh | bash, macOS: curl -fsSL https://apiself.com/install/en/setup-macos.sh | bash, Windows PowerShell: irm https://apiself.com/install/en/install-windows.ps1 | iex.

Question 8

Can boxes talk to each other?

Accepted Answer

Yes - every box reaches its dependencies through the Manager's cross-box proxy (/api/cb/*). Examples: Filedrop asks Notify to email a share link; Recorder pushes a recording to Storage and queues it in Transcribe; Transcribe summarises through the LLM box. Cross-box install / start / setup is managed exclusively in the Manager UI.

Question 9

Is there a free tier?

Accepted Answer

Yes - every box has a real Free tier (not a teaser). After a paid Trial expires, the box gracefully degrades back to Free instead of locking the user out. The Free tier is intentionally useful (e.g. Read Later Free = 50 articles, Filedrop Free = 1 GB / 24h / 3 downloads per link).

Question 10

Who handles payments, VAT, and invoices?

Accepted Answer

APISelf is operated by magnetic s.r.o. (Slovakia), a VAT-registered company and the seller of record. Payments are processed securely by Stripe (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay) - APISelf never stores card details. VAT is applied according to your country and a proper invoice is issued for every purchase via SuperFaktura.

Question 11

Can I run APISelf on a NAS, VPS, or Docker?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The Manager and boxes are single Go binaries, no Docker required. They run on a Synology / QNAP NAS, on a self-hosted VPS, in WSL2, or inside a Docker container. The Manager auto-detects WSL2 and shifts ports to avoid conflicts with a Windows-native install (7574 / box range 7600-7699).